by Vox Day
The captain rose and his scarlet wings stretched out from behind his shoulders. He inclined his head to Khasar; despite the chagrin that was obvious on his face, the archon bowed deeply in return. “I am very sorry, sir, if I have needlessly disturbed you. I merely did not wish to compound my failure.”
“Better safe than sorry, archon. Think nothing of it.” The captain lifted his hand, preparing to tear the fabric of space-time again. “Fare you well, children.”
Derek glanced at Holli. For once they were in perfect accord. “Wait!” he leaped to his feet. “You can’t leave us like this! We’re just two stupid humans who don’t have a clue what’s going on, and Khasar here barely knows what he’s doing! Before, you told us that the fate of Europe hung in the balance, you can’t just go off and leave us now when it’s all going to Hell!”
The angel paused and looked over at Khasar. Then he sighed and lowered his hand. “Derek, my dear boy, I’m afraid you fail to understand. This entire world is going to Hell. At this very moment, there are eight situations which threaten to engulf the entire planet in plague, starvation, blood and fire. Why do you think I could spare naught but an inexperienced archon for this mission? By our standards, this is only a code yellow, a probable danger, albeit one of merely local proportions.”
Holli gasped and Derek sat back on the bed, visibly stunned. “You’re saying that a second Holocaust is, like, not a big deal?”
“By no means. I’m merely informing you that it is neither the most-pressing, nor even the eighth-most pressing situation at this moment.”
“I don’t even want to know what those other ones are, do I,” said Derek, half to himself.
“Not if you wish to sleep at night. Now, be brave and persevere, son and daughter of the King. There are many whose lives are depending on you.”
“Great, as if I needed to hear that,” muttered Derek. Holli couldn’t have agreed with him more. There was another pair of disturbingly loud roars, and the angelic captain was gone.
The two teenagers looked at Khasar, and the archon stared right back at them. “Well, so much for help from that angle,” he finally said. “Anyone have any ideas about what to do next?”
Chapter 26
Points to Ponder
This city now doth like a garment wear
the beauty of the morning: Silent, bare,
ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
open unto the fields and to the sky;
all bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
—William Wordsworth, Lines Composed upon Westminster Bridge
If London was lovely in the sunlight, it was shockingly depressing in the rain. The cold seemed to penetrate down to the bone, magnified by a dampness that prevented you from ever getting completely dry or all-the-way-through warm. It was dirty too; the water sluicing off of the old grey buildings was dark with filth as it pooled near the sewer drains. Derek and Holli trudged along the sidewalk; when Derek’s umbrella entangled itself for the fifth time in the umbrella of someone walking the other way, he finally gave it up for a bad cause and folded it down.
“You’re going to get a cold,” Holli told him.
“Like you care,” he snapped back. It was hard to disagree. He had been monstrously unpleasant all morning, although in fairness, she could tell by the careful way he moved that his wounds were bothering him, even though he tried to hide it. Stupid.
Part of his bad humor might simply be jealousy, as fortunately for her, Holli was able to walk shadow out of the weather. Her only presence was a voice and the raindrops fell harmlessly through her. But the grey cloud-shrouded sky was chilling in itself, that and the knowledge that unless they found the magic sword and killed this prince of demons, angelic war would soon be followed by the real thing and millions of people would die again in Europe. Khasar was out and about trying to dig up information on the sword, while the two of them, being rather handicapped by their humanity, went to have lunch.
“Do you want to try that Indian place?” she pointed to a colorful red sign. “I bet the curry is really good here.”
“No, we’re in England, we’ve got to try the fish and chips.”
“All right,” she sighed. She wasn’t that hungry anyhow. Nothing like globs of processed fish hamburger fried in oil and fat. No wonder his complexion was so bad.
The restaurant looked like it wanted to be an imitation of McDonalds, except the food was worse. The seats were made of bright shiny yellow plastic but at least they were clean. The ladies room, on the other hand, was a pit of filth and Holli was glad that she was only there to conceal her move down to the lowest strata and visibility. She might be disguised as an angel, but she still needed to keep her body fed. Hopefully they’d have a salad or at least something that wasn’t a zillion calories.
She was in luck, sort of. The salad might have been fresh yesterday, but at least it was edible. She wasn’t entirely sure if that was true about the dripping concoction that was soaking through Derek’s paper plate. Fortunately, he burned his mouth on the first bite; maybe that was the trick to eating the disgusting glop. She shuddered.
“What?” he demanded.
“Nothing.”
There was a long silence.
“Do you think Khasar will find this Puck guy?”
“How would I know? If you ask me, we ought to just be looking for the sword. If Puck needs the sword too, eventually he’ll show up wherever the sword is. That would seem to make more sense.”
It kind of did, she grudgingly admitted. “Unless he’s got it already. But okay, so, how do we even start looking for a sword in a place as big as this.”
“I don’t know.” He bit into the crunchy fish-stuff, more gingerly this time. “But I think it’s important to consider one thing.”
“What’s that?”
She tried not to notice as he wiped his hands on a napkin and dropped the greasy, balled-up paper onto his tray. “Well, haven’t you noticed anything strange about, like, this whole world of angels and whatnot?”
“I’ve noticed a lot of strange things.”
“Well, right, but I mean, what’s really leaped out at me is the way that we’ve somehow picked up a lot of this information over time. Like, it kind of leaks out onto us. We being humanity, of course.”
“I don’t get it. What leaks onto us?”
He shook his head and wiped his nose with his wrist. “Not us, like you and me. I mean us, as in Mankind. The collective us. We have all these stories and myths about things like, whatever, werewolves and stuff. And then, lo and behold, they’re kind of true. Not really in the way the stories tell it—I mean the angels think they’re about one step down from pond scum—but the basic truth is there. So, I’m thinking, maybe this sword is the same deal, you know?”
“That there’s stories about swords that are true? But there aren’t any stories about swords!”
Derek snorted and rolled his eyes. “You don’t read much, do you, blondie. There’s millions of stories about swords. Heck, Saberhagen even wrote a whole series, two series, actually, called the Book of Swords and the Lost Book of Swords. Then there’s Glamdring, Anduril, and Narsil, not to mention Beater and Biter, there’s Excalibur, there’s Elric’s sword—what was it called—yeah, Stormbringer.”
Derek clearly needed to get out more, Holli thought. Although that would, admittedly, be difficult in prison. “But those are all just made up, aren’t they?”
“So are werewolves and vampires, right? At least, that’s what I thought until that Khasar decided to dangle me like a doggie treat in front of a whole freaking pack. If I’d actually believed they were real, I don’t know if I would have been so, you know, open to the idea.”
“Khasar is a good angel,” Holli told him. She didn’t like the tone in Derek’s voice when he mentioned the archon’s name. “He saved my life twice. Well, actually, I don’t think he did the second time, but he sacrificed himself trying to.”
“Yeah, see, that�
��s my problem with him,” Derek said as he popped another chunk of fried fish in his mouth. “I mean, I think he’s in over his head here. Like you said, he tried to save you, but he didn’t. He almost got me munched back there by those werewolves, and from what he was saying to the Captain, he wasn’t prepared for what we ran into either.”
“So he misjudged the situation, so what?”
“Looks like he misjudged this Puck guy too. He seems to do that a lot.”
“Well, he picked you and me, didn’t he?”
Derek eyed her dubiously and laughed, a dry, mocking sneer of a laugh. “I think he could’ve done a lot better than pick me. You think you’re up to saving something like half the world?”
Holli looked down. She didn’t like to admit it, but Derek was right. Then she shrugged. “Well, at least it’s only half the world that’s going down. We already know it could be worse.”
Derek lifted his plastic cup to her in a salute. “Eight times worse! There’s the spirit! I’ll say one thing, though. If an idiot angel, a cheerleader and a convicted felon can manage to stop these supernatural psychopaths from murdering millions of innocent people, it’ll totally prove there is a God.”
“I think I liked it better when they taught us that God was in control of everything. You know, that he was, like, counting the sparrows and whatever.”
“Just cause he knows what’s up with the sparrows doesn’t mean that he’s personally knocking them down with lightning bolts, blondie. He’d be a pretty sick, sadistic sort of God if he did.” Derek indicated the street. “Take a look around you. Just about everywhere, somebody is starving or stealing or killing somebody. You think God wanted me to shoot your boyfriend? No, he’s not running this place, and he hasn’t been since he told Adam the deal was his to run the way he wanted. Adam screwed it up, and we’ve been screwing it up worse and worse ever since. That’s what I think, anyhow.”
Holli could hear the self-loathing in his voice. For once, she couldn’t accept it. “Derek.” She met his eyes. “You even didn’t shoot Eric. Brien’s guilt died with Brien. You’ve got enough guilt of your own to deal with. Jesus is the only one who can take it away from anyone else.”
Derek’s eyes darkened and he looked out the window. “Brien was a really nice guy. The nicest guy. No one would believe that now, but he was. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. He must have been pushed around a thousand times without even defending himself. All his life, he got pushed around and he just took it, again and again and again. But those Fallen devils, man, they knew what they were doing. They channeled all of that hate and rage from twelve freaking years of getting treated like dirt and we did exactly what they wanted us to.” He looked her squarely in the eyes. “And they used me to talk him into it, so don’t tell me that it isn’t my fault. And I’m not trying to excuse myself either.”
“I know.”
“Look, I understand that God forgives me for what I did, even if you can’t, even if no one else can. And I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t if I was in your shoes. I can almost, kind of, forgive myself now. But I’ll never forgive those demons for using me like that. Never. It’s not what they did to me, but what they did to destroy Brien, turning him into something he wasn’t. Something that he never was.”
I forgive you, Holli wanted to tell him. She even knew she should. But she couldn’t bring herself to say the words. She couldn’t. She didn’t. She looked at him, still so full of anger, though a different kind of anger now, and she almost began to understand him. Almost. But forgive him? No, that she could not do. Not now. Not ever.
“So, what about the sword?” She tried to move their conversation to safer ground.
“Swords, right. Let’s see if we can find one of those Internet cafes. I hear they’re pretty big here. We can look up a list of all the legendary swords and see how many of them might happen to be in England. If that doesn’t work, we can just head a few blocks that way.”
He pointed. Holli looked in that direction and saw nothing but a big Anglican church. “What’s that way?”
“The British Museum. If our sword is anywhere, I’ll bet ten pounds that it’s in there.”
“It can’t be that easy. You’re on. Holli reached into her purse for the unfamiliar coins. “What do I owe you for the salad, anyhow?”
“Don’t worry about it.” Derek grandly waved her off. “I’m not going to be needing this once we’re done anyhow.”
Holli frowned. “You can change it back, you know.”
Derek laughed humorlessly. “Not a lot of shopping in the state pen, blondie. Now, let’s see if we can go find a mocha. I’ve been dying for one for three months.”
They found an Internet cafe only two blocks away, in between a parking garage and another Indian fast-food place. It was crowded, but a Macintosh was free, so Holli went to fetch the coffees while Derek paid for an hour on the computer. By the time they’d served up her vanilla frappe and his extra-super-large mocha, he was already lost in a jigsaw puzzle of Google screens. She set the two hot drinks down gingerly on the edge of the little plastic desk and drew up a chair as he copied a long chunk of text from a web site and pasted it into what she assumed was his notes window.
The scraping sound of her moving the chair seemed to pull him out of his geek-zone, and he accepted the mocha from her with both hands as if it was an ancient and fragile religious artifact. “You have no idea… I’ve dreamed about these.”
He closed his eyes and sniffed deeply at the aroma. “I think they have generic Folgers at the prison. You can mix the hot chocolate powder with it, but there’s no comparison. I take it back—Khasar can dangle me in front of a dozen werewolf packs every day and it’d be worth it for this one moment. It’d be so worth it!”
Holli stared at him, bemused, as he took a sip from the large paper cup. “You are a seriously weird guy,” she said. “And here I thought Christopher was bad.” For the first time, she thought it might be possible not to completely hate him.
She looked at the list. There were, it seemed, rather a lot of legendary swords. Mohammed alone had four of them.
“Well, it makes sense, when you think about it,” Derek said. “People have only been killing each other with guns for about 200 years, and they’ve been using swords for more than ten times as long. So, it’s only logical for myths to spring up around a lot of them.”
She peered at his list. “There’s so many! Where do we start?”
“Actually, there’s only seven, if we just go ahead and bag everything that’s been made up in the last sixty years. I figure that we can consider everything from Tolkien on as modern fiction—if we’re wrong, we can always go back and tackle that stuff starting with the British writers.”
He laughed. “Although, I suppose Michael Moorcock will think we’re either retarded or on drugs if we call him up and ask him, gee, you don’t suppose that any of that Elric stuff is real, do you? I mean, even if some spirit was leaking it out through him, how’s he supposed to know?”
She nodded impatiently. “You said there were seven? Why seven?”
“Well, we have to trust that our Heavenly CIA knows what they’re talking about when they said it’s somewhere in England. I mean, if they’re wrong, we’re hosed anyhow, right? So, here’s the five that have direct connections with England: Excalibur, obviously, Aroundight, which was Lancelot’s sword, Chrysaor, which belonged to someone named Artegal, Morglay, which belonged to Sir Bevis and sounds kind of Scottish, and Curtana, which actually belonged to one of the English kings.”
“That poor knight!” Holli shook her head.
“Who? Oh, Sir Bevis?” Derek laughed. “I doubt it bothered him much, considering he lived like seven hundred years before MTV. So that’s five and there’s also these two other swords that aren’t English, but kind of jumped out at me. These two.”
“Flamberge and Balmung?” Holli read off the screen. “They don’t sound very English to me.”
“Especially since they were made for guys
named Maugis and Siegfried. Those aren’t English names either. I have no idea who Maugis was, but Siegfried is the guy from Wagner’s Ring cycle. You know what I’m talking about?”
“No clue.”
“Kill-the-wabbit, kill-the-wabbit?” Derek sang, not very well.
“Oh, right, that opera thing!”
“Anyhow, it’s Germanic mythology, but the interesting thing is that supposedly someone named Wayland made it. Very Stone Temple Pilots, right? Anyhow, I remember reading about John Wayland Smith, he was, like, this Old One, a supernatural figure, almost a god.”
“He made swords?”
“Right! But what’s interesting is that he’s an English smith, making swords for this major German hero as well as what sounds kind of French to me. Flamberge, that’s French, don’t you think?”
“So, you’re thinking maybe he didn’t make one of those swords, but was handing out swords that he found?”
Derek shrugged. “I have no idea. I just think we should keep him on the list. For now, anyway. So, we’ve got five swords and one sword-maker. Excalibur is the biggy, of course, and after that, I think Curtana sounds the most interesting, since it was not only the sword of the kings, but specifically a king named Edward the Confessor, who’s actually a saint. I’m guessing we can blow off the Scottish one, since Scotland wouldn’t have been part of the deal back when Oberon was ruling Albion.”
Holli nodded. “You’re thinking maybe King Edward had something to do with the Fallen, and an angel gave him the sword?”
“I don’t know. The problem is that I don’t remember hearing anything about Edward the Confessor ever doing anything legendary. We know why Arthur needed Excalibur, since he was turning back the barbarians and all. Launcelot, same deal. I don’t know anything about the other three. But, at least I know where to look. The funny thing is, I could have done all this from the prison library. I don’t know why Khasar needed to get me out.”